This is one of those games that needs VESA support, ie an older video card. Another option is to check with the manufacturer of your vid card and see if there is a legacy driver for it that might work. I think there are some programs out there now too for newer cards but I'm not up on those. Run a search in this forum for VESA and you'll find a lot of discussion on it.

For more info on VESA problems you can search this forum or Vagoons forum http://vogons.zetafleet.com.But this game really is a big problem and I´ve always had some "vesa problems" with it on different computers and operating systems. Now I have GeForce2 MX card (VESA VBE 3.0 supported) and all old VESA games which I have work just fine - except of Ark of Time, Noctropolis and Riddle of Master Lu. I have a multiboot system with DOS, Windows 98SE and XP - on all the systems I now got that "vesa not supported" notice with Ark of Time. (Riddle and Noctropolis work in DOS, but not in XP). Above mentioned utility (and some others like VBEPLUS http://home.student.utwente.nl/r.muller/unirefresh did not help in DOS and XP. But I remember I´ve played Ark on this machine some time before - in Win98SE with Scitech Display Doctor 7 beta - but this product expires after 30 days without possibility of registration. I think this game needs some unusual VESA mode, maybe 640x480x24bpp.So you have to be really lucky to get Ark running and it is probably a bigger adventure than the game itself. Interplay distributed Ark and they have an info on their webpages that all technical support for this title is handled by Koei Games (and there is nothing more but a bad Koei link). Correct link is http://www.koei.com/On Koei webpages is no info about Ark and I doubt that their helpline can solve the problems with Ark (but I did not ask them). Probably only God, and perhaps leading programmer, Fabrizio Lagorio, know why "vesa is not supported" even when it is. I think he still creating games, The Watchmaker was one of them.

I don´t know about Matrox, but ATI Rage 128 has VBE 2.0 only. And without VBE 3.0 is impossible to set vesa refresh rates with an Unirefresh utility, so the screen horribly flickers on CRT monitors (often 6O Hz). I think only SciTech Display Doctor 7.0 beta can solve the problem and add VBE 3.0 support to Ati Rage 128. By the way, has anybody seen Ark running under XP or other NT based system? I have a notebook with an Ati Rage Mobility 128 and Win2000 and there is "vesa not supported" again.

I don't know about the ATI Rage Mobility 128, but I played Ark of Time on a desktop computer with an ATI Rage 128 32MB (aka ATI Rage Fury) in DOS mode and had no problems. I didn't notice any screen flickering. No more than with any other old DOS game anyway.

If you can't play Ark of Time you won't be able to play Angel Devoid either. Check this link where Syd mentioned that Ark of Time and Angel Devoid both use the old VESA 1.0.

One of the previous graphic cards in my desktop computer was ATI Rage 128 Pro 32MB (I don´t have it anymore) and I had screen flickering and 60 Hz only in all VESA games. Do you still have the ATI Rage 128 and could you check your monitor refresh rates when some VESA game is running? Maybe you are not so sensitive to the screen flickering but 85 Hz is usually considered as an acceptable minimum. If you have 85 Hz or more everything is O.K.About VESA 1.0 - VESA standards are backward compatible so any game which require VESA 1.0 should run without problems on a system supporting higher VESA standard. The fact is that it doesn´t always work. But I played Ark of Time on the system with GeForce2 MX (VESA 3.0 card) so maybe in this case the problem is somewhere else.

I have to set my desktop resolution to 85 Hz because lower than that will bother my eyes and give me a headache. I don't know how to tell what my monitor refresh rate is while I'm playing a DOS game. It may be that the refresh rate doesn't bother me so much when I'm not doing something that requires reading. I'll load Ark of Time again and see if I notice anything.

I know VESA is supposed to be backwards compatible. But so many gamers have had difficulties with old games that use older VESA standards that you know they can't all be wrong. Especially when it's the same games that repeatedly give problems. Some games that have given people trouble are Riddle of Master Lu, Angel Devoid, 11th Hour, Ripper, the original DOS version of Jack Orlando, Synnergist, and Ark of Time. I know I'm leaving some out.

The most likely explanation for the difficulty seems to be that the people who made the games tested them with the VESA that was current at that time and tweaked their games to work with that version rather than programming in a way that was fully VESA compliant. Then when newer video cards came out, the drivers were made to adhere to VESA 3 standards. But they weren't tested with every old game that was out there.

I think you are right about it running at 60 Hz. The game has that slight shimmer that 60 Hz produces on a desktop environment. I guess I didn't notice when I played it because the quality of the graphics is such that the refresh rate is not the first thing that jumps out at me. What I do remember is that it didn't bother me while I was playing the way a 60 Hz Windows desktop does.

When you played it with a Geforce 2, were you able to get higher than 60 Hz?

1) Jenny 100: "The most likely explanation for the difficulty seems to be that the people who made the games tested them with the VESA that was current at that time..."I agree that this is the most likely explanation. And the problem is, as you know, even more complicated - there are not only new VESA standards, but new hardware and new Windows systems. For example some VESA games have problem on NT/2000/XP that can be solved by Ken Silverman´s NOLFB VESA patch http://www.advsys.net/ken/build.htm . For other VESA games is this patch useless. Every problem is rather unique and no universal solution for all problematic VESA games (let alone all older games) exists. It is sad that people who made those games and have access to the source code are often no longer interested in big problems that gamers have with their products (of course, company may be no longer existent, but people usually live) and probably never read forums like this. There are a positive exceptions like LBA WIN patch http://lbawin.c0m.st/ and people from Revolution at least gave the source code for Beneath a Steel Sky to the fans so now we can play that game again on the current systems.

2) Jenny 100: "When you played it with a Geforce 2, were you able to get higher than 60 Hz?"Yes, there is a solution. Shareware program Unirefresh (link is above) or freeware VBEHZ http://www.informatik.fh-muenchen.de/~ifw98223/vbehz.htm . Both work even in Win XP NTVDM (Virtual DOS Machine) but with VBE 3.0 cards only (like GeForce2). If your card doesn´t support VBE 3.0 there still may be a way, SciTech Display Doctor. But SciTech must support your card. AtiRage 128 is supported in SciTech 7.0 beta. However, I´m not sure if all VESA games will work with these utilities.

3) For gamers who don´t know how to tell the refresh rates in DOS games: Many modern monitors have OSD (On Screen Display) menu where usually is info about the current refresh rates. Access to that menu is often through OSD button on monitor.